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Abortion Rights Battles Return in the 2023 Elections, Plus Wages at Walmart

On this week's episode of Start Making Sense, John Nichols discusses politics and Rick Wartzman comments on America’s biggest employer.

Jon Wiener and Start Making Sense

January 19, 2023

A cross is seen on top of a church steeple as pro-choice demonstrators march to the house of US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in Alexandria, Va., on May 9, 2022.(Stefani Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images)

Abortion rights voters are reshaping politics in the coming political season—starting with a special election to the Virginia State Senate. John Nichols joins the show to discuss this and the most important election of 2023: the open seat on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court.

Also on this episode: Walmart is the biggest employer in America, and the Walton family, the children of Walmart founder Sam Walton, is the richest family in the world. Rick Wartzman joins the show to talk about how the company has raised wages and become more socially conscious-but it provides a case study of the limits of socially conscious capitalism. Wartzman’s new book on Walmart and its workers is titled Still Broke.

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Jon WienerTwitterJon Wiener is a contributing editor of The Nation and co-author (with Mike Davis) of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties.


Start Making SenseTwitterStart Making Sense is The Nation’s podcast, hosted by Jon Wiener and coproduced by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts for new episodes each Thursday.  


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